The Loyal Alone

Chapter Two

Sleeping is a blissful thing for me. I've always been more inclined to relax and nap than to get out of bed and actually do things, like read, or run, or well, anything really. I read an article somewhere that this is a symptom of depression. I'm no doctor, and I wouldn't say personally that I have depression, simply a love and deep appreciation of sleep. That's normal, I'm sure. Indicative of any woman my age with no liberty or freedom who could possibly spend copious amounts of energy at any given time to change from woman to dog in seconds. To say the least, I like my sleep.

So, when I was woken by a loud scraping noise; clearly my father who did not transform out of wolf form before clanging back into the back of the cab; I was beyond pissed.

Defeated, drunk old man or not, my sleep is nothing too scoff at.

My eyes snapped open and I turned over violently, tossing the covers off of me to the foot of the 'bed'. I was breathing through my teeth at this point, fuming mad. I'd spent so much time filling the tuck with gas and cleaning out the back of the cab before falling asleep the first time, only to be woken up- TWICE- by my father who clearly had issues with me sleeping.

My dad is not a big man, that being said, your weight does not change in wolf form, everything is simply rearranged. So, in wolf form, my father is huge. The average wolf is probably five feet long, thirty inches tall and approximately 100-110 pounds, they would walk on all fours and have skinny legs and bushy tails. My dad is five feet, six inches; about 140 pounds, most of which is lean muscle, but his arms and legs were much thicker than a normal wolf's, and perhaps his belly bulges a little more as of the recent months. His fur is black and slightly curly; like his normal hair color; with a brownish muzzle where his fur thins out a bit and you can see more of his skin color, which comes to a point between his eyes. His paws are also slightly brown around the pads of his feet and underbelly, again, because the hair thins out. And from my understanding, having only known two wolves, myself and my father, we didn't have tails either.

The wolf that was climbing up into the truck bed and now standing in front of me was not my father. This wolf was a pale blonde. There were no color changes or patterns on her fur, no markings of any kind aside from red ankles and wrists and what seemed like welts on her back, but they were hard to see at the angle she sat. Her fur was in patches and clung to her body easily to show off the shape of her ribs and bones. She was smaller than my father, much smaller- smaller than me even, were I in similar form. Maybe 5 feet in length-though most likely not. Possibly 90 pounds- I wouldn't stake my life on it. She's looking at me, her head cocked to the side, her nose turned to the air, sniffing, surely trying to decide if I am what I seem to be. The hair on her back trembled along her spine and stood on end.

Her smell was undeniable, it was sweet and musky, distinctly female, distinctly like me, except that her age was off as well. She smelt oily, like unwashed hair. She shivered in the cold, but her stance was unmoving. Her eyes never left mine, and there was an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me she was feral, or nearly feral.

Slowly, I shut the window between the cab and the back.

"Hey!" I said loudly, slamming my hand against the closed window, I move my head so that my chin is pointing down and I'm glaring at her from beneath my brows. As a human, it is hard to feel like you're in power when it is you verses a wolf, hard to show authority. I hit the window again hoping to scare her. "Leave!" I splayed my arms out, hitting the edges of the windows. If she is feral, there is a good chance she won't be able to understand what I'm saying. If she isn't, well, sometimes it's hard to understand humans anyways, in human form or not. Being direct is the best I can do. "You're not welcome here!"